


I don't like walking around this old and empty house

by bereft_of_frogs



Series: let the human in (whumptober 2020) [7]
Category: Into the Night (TV 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Apocalypse, Gen, Isolation, Medical Conditions, Post-Apocalypse, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27334849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bereft_of_frogs/pseuds/bereft_of_frogs
Summary: “Empty?” Horst says. “Where could they have gone?”“Is it not going to work?” Ines asks, her voice high and panicked.“It should work,” Horst says. “It should. There’s at least…thirty meters of water above us, it looks like concrete too, if anything is insulating enough against whatever’s going on with the radiation…”“We’ve got forty-five seconds to sunrise,” Jakub says, checking his watch.“So I guess we’re about to find out,” Sylvie says.The survivors arrive at the bunker, only to find it deserted.
Series: let the human in (whumptober 2020) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1993756
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	I don't like walking around this old and empty house

**Author's Note:**

> written for whumptober 2020, day 8: Where Did Everybody Go? (abandoned) 
> 
> fic title: 'Little Talks', Of Monsters and Men

It’s so close to being over. Either way. They’ll either finish their journey, reach shelter after a week of running, or they’ll die in the light of the sun. The sky is already starting to lighten, turning a pale blue at the edges. Even if they had time to return to the airstrip before sunrise, Mathieu knew he’d never get the plane in the air in time. Even if they could get the plane off the ground, they don’t have enough fuel to get far enough away to escape. No, this is the end. Death by the sun, or safety in a shelter.

Mathieu holds onto that faint hope with everything he has. He doesn’t have much. His strength is fading.

Sylvie glances at him sidelong. Her jaw is set in grim determination. There is worry in her eyes.

“Anything yet?” Terenzio asks from the back.

“No,” Sylvie answers. “But we’re almost to the reservoir.”

“How long do we have?” Laura asks.

“Ten minutes.”

Terenzio says something to Laura that’s drowned out by the squeal of the tires as Sylvie takes a turn a little fast. Evidently, it was something offensive because they start arguing. Mathieu drowns their voices out. He’s distracted trying to watch the road for evidence of the bunker, and keeping his too-fast breathing in check. His heart is also beating too fast. That can’t be good.

Sylvie glances in the rearview mirror. “I can’t see the others anymore.”

“They’ll catch up. And if we find the bunker, we can guide them to it.”

She nods and they keep driving.

They cross through an iron gate, through an unmanned guard shack, and cross the reservoir, over a bridge where a line of trucks are parked. “Look, those are military vehicles. That must be a good sign.”

“We must be getting close,” Sylvie says.

“The others still aren’t behind us,” Laura cries.

“They’ll come, they’ll come.” They park the truck at the front of the line of military vehicles and get out, searching for a sign. Out of the corner of his eye, Mathieu sees Sylvie grab Rik’s arm, say something to him, and they both glance in his direction. He pretends he doesn’t see, just like he pretends that his heart is not skipping beats, that his vision is not narrowing. He pushes forward.

“Over here!” Osman cries. “There’s a staircase!” It curves down along the side of the reservoir.

“This has to be the right way.” Laura leads them down the concrete steps. At the bottom, set into the concrete, there is a door. When Mathieu tries the handle, it opens easily under his hand. There is a tunnel, sloping further downwards.

“We did it,” Rik gasps. “We found it, my God.”

“Quickly-”

But Sylvie hangs back. “Go. I’ll wait for the others.”

“Sylvie-”

“Go! I’ll be back in time, I promise. Just go.” She slams the door in his face. Rik’s hand closes on his elbow, pulling him back.

“Come on, Mathieu.” He pulls him away from the door, the barrier behind which half their party remains unprotected. The sun outside must be nearing the horizon.

Mathieu allows Rik to pull him down the corridor. The tunnel slopes sharply down. The air quickly grows heavy and wet.

“We must be right under the reservoir,” Osman says.

“Wouldn’t a secret military bunker have more security?” Laura asks. “This seems too easy, don’t you think?”

“They probably thought no one else would survive to follow them,” Terenzio says. “There wasn’t any security at NATO either.”

“And I’m not sure I’d say this has been easy…” Osman says.

They reach the end of the tunnel, a pair of double doors. Laura is first there, pulls them open and they burst through-

-to a wide, empty chamber. There is no one there.

The bunker is massive and dimly lit. The roof curves up above them. There are crates stacked around the edge, cots lined up, some tech equipment in a pile. But not a soul in sight.

“What?” Laura gasps. “Where is everyone?”

“This is…” Terenzio looks around desperately. “Impossible.”

Mathieu finds he can no longer keep his feet. His strength leaves him all at once. He sinks onto a nearby crate. “They must not have made it.” His mind is still thinking of the others, still out there, praying that they make it.

“What if…” Rik starts. He swallows. “What if they figured out that it doesn’t work? And they went somewhere else?”

“Then we’re dead,” Mathieu says plainly. No one acknowledges what he said.

“How long do they have? The others?” Laura asks, worried.

“Two minutes,” Terenzio says. “They’re not going to make it.”

Mathieu’s heart jumps. “They’ll make it.” They have to. The thought of half of them, trapped out there, Sylvie slamming the door in his face, is somehow more horrifying than the thought that the bunker doesn’t work and they’ll all die here.

There’s a commotion at the door. The others burst through, Ayaz limping and carrying Dominik. Their clothes are torn, Zara has a gash on her forehead.

“What happened?” Laura moves to help Ayaz with Dominik.

“We crashed,” Jakub answers. He claps Mathieu on the shoulder. “But we made it.”

“Where is everyone?” Sylvie asks.

“We don’t know,” Laura answers. “We got here and it was…empty…”

“Empty?” Horst says. “Where could they have gone?”

“Is it not going to work?” Ines asks, her voice high and panicked.

“It should work,” Horst says. “It _should_. There’s at least…thirty meters of water above us, it looks like concrete too, if anything is insulating enough against whatever’s going on with the radiation…”

“We’ve got forty-five seconds to sunrise,” Jakub says, checking his watch.

“So I guess we’re about to find out,” Sylvie says.

Silence. They stand in silence, waiting for _something_ to happen. The seconds tick by. A minute. Two.

“That’s…that’s it, then?” Jakub breaks the silence. “The sun has to be up.”

“It’s up,” Horst says. “It must be. It must have worked.”

“We knew it would,” Osman says. “The fuel from Antwerp…”

“I mean, I had my doubts.” Ines turns in a circle. “Where the hell is everyone, though? Why is it just abandoned?” Mathieu sighs, slumping having to lean on his hand to keep from collapsing.

“I have no idea,” Laura says.

“And what happened to you? What happened to your clothes?” Rik asks.

Horst laughs in response. “It’s a long story. We crashed the jeep. We went the wrong way, had to hop a barbed wire fence.”

“I’m still worried,” Terenzio says, turning around. “At NATO…”

“They could have gone somewhere else,” Jakub reasons. “Somewhere more convenient, maybe there are more bunkers out there. This one could have been a backup.”

“It looks pretty well stocked,” Sylvie says, looking around. “Why waste all of these supplies on a backup?”

“They could have crashed,” Mathieu says. “Look what it took to get us here. If we had just one thing go wrong, we would have been doomed.” Sylvie nods in agreement. “It could have been anything. Debris on the runway, mechanical failure in the air. A thousand things could have kept them from making it here. Almost kept us from making it here.”

“We’re alive though,” Ayaz says tiredly. He’s slumped over on the cot he sank into the moment they all flooded into the bunker. “The sun is up and we’re alive.”

“Yes,” Sylvie says. She rests her hand on Mathieu’s shoulder.

They fall to silence, a shocked, relieved silence, in turn glancing up at the ceiling as if it’s going to fall around them. It doesn’t. The minutes tick by and nothing happens. It’s daytime and they’ve survived. But the relief turns to exhaustion rapidly, as the crash sets in.

“We should try and sleep,” Jakub says eventually. His voice breaks the spell over them. “Now that we know we won’t die.”

“I agree,” Sylvie says. “We can figure out what to do next once we’ve gotten some rest.”

“Yes,” Laura says. “There are some more cots…Horst, could you…?”

“Of course.” The others all jump to help ready themselves a somewhat comfortable sleeping area.

Mathieu moves to rise, but Jakub pushes him back down. “Just rest, Mathieu, it’s alright.” There is plain concern in Jakub’s voice. Mathieu must look as badly as he feels. “We’ll take care of it.” Jakub pats his shoulder. “You got us here. Let us take care of the rest.”

He manages to nod. He would probably only get in the way. It’s getting harder and harder to focus his attention. His heartbeat is fluttering now. It’s hot in the bunker, though he’s still aware enough to think that can’t possibly be true. The others are shivering. He is sweating, feeling like he’s boiling alive in his skin. His bones ache. Now that his mission is complete, now that he’s gotten them here, the crash was inevitable. He wonders if this will be the end of him. If he had made it this far only for the infection to kill him. Well, he was right, back in the Jeep. In any case, it was over. It was all over.

_Fuck Terenzio_ , he thinks with feverish hysteria. He’s too tired to think anything else.

Eventually someone - he thinks Jakub - comes and with a gentle grip pulls him up from the crate and helps him to lie down on a thin cot. A heavy blanket settles around him. It’s dark and quiet and finally, Mathieu sleeps deeply and without dreams.

\- - -

Sylvie dreams of being back in the airport, sitting at the bar. It’s loud, crowded with people and chatter and the announcements being made overhead. She has a glass of vodka in front of her, clear and cold. The bartender says something to her that she can’t hear because it’s drowned out by the boarding announcement of her flight to Moscow…

She wakes with a jolt in the empty bunker the sudden silence is a shock. Her heart is beating hard in her chest. The darkness looms above her. Somewhere up there in the shadows is a concrete ceiling, above that the reservoir, above that the sun and death. She sits up.

Jakub is moving through the cots. He must have been what woke her.

“What time is it?” she asks quietly, not wanting to disturb the others.

“Almost 3 in the afternoon,” Jakub says. “Go back to sleep.” He sounds tense, like something’s wrong.

Sylvie rubs the sleep from her eyes and sits up. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, go back to-”

“Jakub, what’s wrong?”

He sighs. “Mathieu’s getting worse. His fever’s higher, and Laura’s worried about his heart rate still. He’s sleeping again, but he woke up a little while ago, and he wasn’t really coherent. She also says she’s concerned about Ayaz and Dominik, and head injuries…”

“Shit.” Sylvie runs her hand through her hair. “We’re in trouble.”

“Yes,” Jakub agrees. “We need help.”

They all manage to get back to sleep, rotating for the last few hours of the day to keep an eye on the ill and wounded. Sylvie rises at dusk, rolling out her shoulders. She takes a turn around the bunker, stretching her legs. Jakub is on watch duty, sitting with his head in his hand in a chair.

“Any change?”

He shakes his head. “I think that’s a good thing though. No one’s gotten any worse. Though, no one’s gotten any better either. Ayaz woke up a little while ago, still was a bit out of it. Laura managed to find another oxygen tank, I helped her hook up to Dominik’s regulator. Zara’s forehead’s swelled up like a grapefruit, but she says she’s okay. We couldn’t find any ice.”

The evening is spent organizing supplies, something that Terenzio takes charge of. Sylvie’s not sure she likes that. Nor is she sure that she likes his justification, that as a soldier he’s the best qualified to the sorting and organizing of supplies, but she bites her tongue. At least Terenzio’s ally, Rik, even looks at him with suspicion now, so he has less power over them. He does argue with Ines when she makes a suggestion, but Sylvie sees her holding her own and decides to leave them be. At a glance, there’s enough rations to last them a while, they have time to do a more careful accounting later.

They find some outdated communications equipment that Horst and Jakub look over and pronounce almost-salvageable.

“We might be able to contact other bunkers, if they’re out there,” Horst says.

“We’re missing some pieces, it looks like, and the machine’s badly outdated. But if we can use some of the equipment from the avionics bay…”

Sylvie nods. “So you want to go back to the plane?”

“I want to go back to the plane.”

“Let’s go.”

The plane sits lonely on the runway, just as they left her. It’s strange, driving up at a leisurely pace, but they have hours until sunrise, so it would be a foolish risk to drive recklessly. Still, there’s an air of tension as Sylvie and Jakub drive up and break down their plan of action.

“I’ll get as much of the comms equipment as I can. Theoretically we won’t need the plane anymore, for now at least, so I’m going to rip out what I need, obviously nothing that would render her un-airworthy, but if we do need to take off again I’ll probably need a couple of days before I can get the avionics back in one piece.”

Sylvie nods. “Hopefully we won’t have to go anywhere in an emergency for a while. I’m on food, blankets, and personal effects. And we can always come back, if we need something more.”

“Right,” Jakub says. “Strange, isn’t it? That we’re not running anymore. To be in one place for now.”

“Yes,” Sylvie agrees. “Really strange.”

The only sound at the airport is the wind in the trees and the drag of the staircase across the tarmac as they drag it up to the plane. They enter by the light of flashlights. Jakub drops down into the hole immediately, to start taking apart the avionics. Sylvie goes first to the overhead bin where she had stashed her bag. The urn is solid and heavy in her hands. Relieved, she slings her backpack over her shoulders and heads into the cockpit.

It’s creepy and a little lonely, to be in the dark cockpit. None of the instruments are lit up, there’s no mechanical hum. She grabs Mathieu’s bag from where it’s tucked in by the jump seat and takes another moment to stand in the stillness before heading back into the cabin to finish salvaging the rest of their things.

It takes them about an hour to finish gathering supplies and drive back to the shelter.

“Got everything?” Ines asks.

“As much as we could carry.” Sylvie and Jakub set down their crate of electronics from the pilfered avionics bay. She has her bag slung across one shoulder. “There are some more supplies in the truck-”

“We’ll go get them,” Ines volunteers. “Horst wants to get started as soon as possible fixing the communications.” She looks grave.

Jakub frowns. “That urgent?”

She nods. “Yeah. Things are getting worse.”

Jakub heads over to where Horst is already tinkering with the bunker’s comm system and Sylvie goes to check in with Laura.

Laura just shakes her head when she sees her coming. “I told you, I’m not a doctor.”

“Yeah, and I never flew an airplane until a week ago. You’re not doing so bad.” Sylvie sits beside her. “Ines says things are getting worse.”

She nods. “Ayaz is having seizures, or strokes, or _something_. At least, I’m pretty sure he is. When he was awake, he would slip into these trances. From what Ines says it happened before, on the plane. And it’s what caused the crash. Sylvie,” she says insistently, dropping her voice so the others won’t here. “I can’t fix this one. He’s going to need brain surgery - _actual_ brain surgery. This isn’t…this isn’t just cutting off infected tissue. If we don’t get medical help - _actual_ medical help, he’s going to die.”

Sylvie nods. “We can only hope there are other bunkers out there, other shelters. Maybe…just maybe…” She sighs. “But we should also be prepared for the worst.”

Laura sighs. “I agree. I think we should start to find some way to…to make them comfortable, keep them comfortable, if…”

“What about the others?”

“Dominik probably has a concussion. Zara was able to get some of his normal medication from the hospital in Brussels, but I have no idea how it could be interacting with the head trauma. It might be making it worse, I don’t know. And there are always dangers of more complications. He could take a sudden turn for the worse at any moment. Mathieu…” Laura sighs. “We’ll have to wait and see. The fever’s back, higher than before. It’s hard to wake him, and when he does wake he’s barely coherent enough to drink water or take pills. I can’t start IVs, though Horst tried to convince me that I could just watch a _video_ -”

“‘Emergency Field Medicine for Dummies’, no doubt produced by the same people as ‘Landing for Dummies.’” Sylvie gives her a faint half smile, trying to lighten the mood a bit, even though she feels nearly sick. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that they’ve made it here only for three of their number to die. She catches herself wondering where they should bury the bodies, before snapping herself back into the role of the hopeful, encouraging leader. “You’re doing great. For now, we monitor and try to fix the comms equipment, and hope for the best.”

“We have made it this far. Our luck can’t quite have run out yet.”

Sylvie finds herself without a lot to do. She can’t help with the painful reconstruction of the communications equipment, there are already too many cooks in the kitchen of sorting and organizing their supplies, so she drifts along the edges of the bunker, wondering about the people who had so carefully set it up, then disappeared.

There were neatly labelled supplies in crates in the shadows along the edges. She has to admit that Terenzio didn’t do a terrible job organizing, though she suspects the labels are Ines’s work.

Folded blankets in stacks and jugs of water. Crates of food and medical supplies and pads of paper. _Where had the intended occupants of this bunker gone?_ Mathieu was probably right; they probably didn’t make it. They probably crashed somewhere. She thinks about the scene on the runway in Iceland, the fires and crashed aircraft clogging up the runway. Most people probably were just doing what they were: desperately looking for a way to outrun the sun west. But how many _knew_ that there was safety out there? How many were planning on finding their way to a well-stocked bunker to wait out the apocalypse, only to watch their hopes burst into flames as panicked civilians ahead of them made it impossible to take off? That must have been what happened to the ones who were supposed to be here in their place. They must have set out, ready to flee to safety, only to watch as that became all but impossible in the ensuing panic.

It’s a sad thought. Though Sylvie also doesn’t know what to think about people who knew this was coming and that billions of people would die, and gave themselves a way out. But then again, not everyone could be saved from something like this. They likely didn’t want to cause a panic. It became abundantly clear what happens when people panic. It let to crumpled planes and fires on the ground and no way out for anyone.

Honestly, Sylvie thinks they only survived because they’d somehow managed to keep their heads. Despite everything, they hadn’t panicked or fallen to pieces, even when they were out of fuel or flying with a depressurized cabin or dealing with guns being pointed in their faces. How many others would have tipped their situation over into disaster? If they had a different crew on board, a different set of passengers, all this might have turned out very differently.

_They’d been lucky_ , Sylvie admits. Both with the circumstances of their little team, and that Terenzio had gotten them out before anyone in Brussels could really start panicking. She’s not about to tell him that, considering he’d caused them far more problems in the subsequent days, not even including nearly killing Ayaz, but it is true that they probably would have all died if he hadn’t hijacked their plane.

Sylvie has nothing else to do and it’s a little creepy poking around in the dark corners of the bunker, so she returns to the tight circle of light that they’re making their base of operations.

Terenzio finds a crate full of vodka that cheers everyone up. They sit around in a circle and eat their rations and pass the bottle back and forth.

The conversation turns, once again, to the mysterious people who were meant to be occupying the bunker and never arrived.

“How many people do you think this bunker was supposed to hold?” Jakub asks.

“Dozens,” Terenzio answers confidently. “No more than a hundred.”

Horst nods. “That seems to fit what we’ve found, how many rations, cots…”

“They’re all dead, right?” Rik asks, glancing around the circle.

“Not necessarily,” Horst shurgs. “Who knows? There might be other bunkers out there, they could just have found another shelter.”

“I think they’re probably dead,” Terenzio says gravely. “To think otherwise is false hope.”

“Well, who’s Mr. Pessimist now?” Ines says with some bitterness.

“But there _are_ other bunkers out there, aren’t there?” Osman asks quietly. “We’re not…we’re not the last ones, right?”

They all sit with that thought for a minute.

“No,” Horst says. “I’m sure there are others. The British soldiers - the ones that left those three we picked up behind - had to be going somewhere. There would be other bunkers, other places to protect from radiation. I don’t think we’re alone…”

The hairs on Sylvie’s arms raise, thinking about them being alone on the entire planet, in the entire universe. A tiny speck in the void. A tiny circle of light, surrounded by shadow and concrete and water, and then beyond that _nothing_.

Horst’s watch chimes an alarm.

“That’s sunrise,” Jakub says. They all glance up at the concrete high above them. Somewhere up there, the sun is rising, killing anything alive in its path. A minute passes in tense silence.

“We should probably get to sleep,” Horst says. But he hasn’t taken his eyes off the ceiling, looking unnerved.

Jakub takes a long drink out of the bottle and passes it to Rik. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need a little more to drink before I can even begin to think about sleeping.”

They get back to talking about anything but their current situation. Sylvie rises, needing a break, and goes back to the infirmary. Laura’s fallen asleep with her head on her arms. Sylvie grabs a spare blanket and drapes it over her shoulders.

“Hey,” Jakub says when Sylvie wakes up at sunset. “Can you help us with Laura?”

‘Helping with Laura’ apparently means ‘convincing her that she can learn to place IVs based on a youtube video.’

“Look,” Horst says. “I’ve found a really clear video, it’s just like giving an injection just…more precise.” He glances at Sylvie. “Sylvie, tell her that watching a video’s good enough.”

“Sure it’s not a replacement for actual training,” she admits. “But we got the plane on the ground and no one died, so I’ll count that as a win.” Laura seems to soften. “It’s the best we can do for now.”

“Mathieu’s barely waking up,” Jakub says in a low voice. “You said, the dehydration was making him worse, that it was more dangerous than-”

“Yes, yes I said that.” Laura sighs. “Fine. But let me watch it through a couple times first.”

It takes her three attempts to do it. Sylvie firmly holds Mathieu’s arm the whole time, but he barely stirs, even as Laura jabs the needle into his arm. Her hands are a little shaky, but then she takes a deep breath and the tremor subsides. Finally, the blood flows back into the tube precisely like it does in the video and Laura breathes a sigh of relief. “Okay. Now we can keep him hydrated, at least. I wish we had IV antibiotics…”

“We have what we have,” Sylvie says. “And we’ve got to work with it.”

Laura wavers and then ultimately decides to put him on oxygen too. They only have a few tanks, and they’ll need to conserve it, but she’s really worried about how shallow his breathing is, how irregular and fluttering his heartbeat is.

“Why wouldn’t they have antibiotics here?” Sylvie asks at one point when Laura comes to check on the IV.

She shrugs. “There are some in pill bottles, but none as IVs. Maybe they were planning on bring them here with the last supplies, with themselves. I don’t know.” She checks Mathieu’s vital signs. “Better. Not great. But better.”

Ayaz is more confused when he wakes. He still snaps out of it, still eventually regains alertness, but he calls Zara by the wrong name and seems to think he is somewhere else for a long few minutes before he remembers. He blinks slowly, gaze distant. The bruising around his eyes strangely seems to be getting worse, not better.

They sleep through the day again. Their circadian rhythms seem to fall into their new pattern so quickly. It’s probably down to how scrambled they got in their long night of fleeing for their lives.

They wake to no change in any of their patients. Horst and Jakub go back to work on the radios. Ines counts rations again. Terenzio begins talking about an exploration mission, to check out their surrounding area, see if they can find anything useful.

Sylvie spends her time hovering between Mathieu and Ayaz’s bedsides, trying to pretend she’s not thinking of graves. She wonders if there’s a shovel somewhere here to dig down six feet into the earth, and then hates herself for the thought.

As if in penance for thinking it, she impulsively reaches out and grasps Mathieu’s hand, squeezing it as if asking for forgiveness. He doesn’t stir. His breath is very shallow.

Things are falling into a steady, but worrisome pattern. They no longer even suggest that they might be the lone survivors, the thought is too horrifying to put to words. Horst and Jakub without saying anything start working around the clock to fix the radios. They finally get things almost working, but the speakers remain silent. It’s starting to look like their last hope is lost, but on the next day: a breakthrough.

“Guys!” Horst’s voice calls out. “I’ve got it! We’re tapped onto a signal just another…”

A voice crackles through the speakers, in accented English. “…Stara 17, do you read?”

“Yes,” Horst responds. “Yes we read.” He laughs with relief. “We are glad to hear your voices.”

“…are…you…? Commander…skaya?”

Horst readjusts the dial.

“What are they saying?” Jakub asks.

“I think they’re wondering where the soldiers are.” Horst glances up at Sylvie. “Do you think I should tell them who we are?”

“I think so,” she responds. “We need help. If they mean us harm…it’s possible but I think it would be worse to not tell them.”

Horst nods. He adjusts a few more knobs. The voice on the other end comes through clearer. “We don’t know who you’re talking about, the bunker was empty when we arrived. We are civilians, we were on a passenger jet out of Brussels. We have wounded, we need help, medicines, doctors…”

There’s silence on the other end for a minute Sylvie fears the connection has been lost, or they’ve decided not to answer.

But then it crackles again and a clear female voice answers them. “You say you are civilians? How did you survive?”

“We flew,” Horst responds. “On a commercial jet. We’ve been flying for a week.”

“And the bunker was abandoned when you arrived?”

“Yes. Entirely.” There’s silence again.

“So? Will they help us?” Jakub says anxiously in French.

“They haven’t said yet,” Sylvie responds.

“We have injured people,” Horst says again. “We need help.”

After a tense moment, the voice returns. “And you’ll get it. Stay put, we’re putting together a team, supplies to send out to you. Can you tell us more about the nature of the injuries? How many are you?”

Horst grins. He starts telling them, giving the details of their journey.

Sylvie slumps in relief and turns back to Jakub. “Good.”

“There are really others out there. I wonder how many more have survived.” He laughs a little. “There are really other survivors.”

Sylvie finds herself grinning as well. “We’re not alone. And we’ve got help.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just going to...keep hanging out in this tiny fandom and keep posting wild AUs for whumptober and there's nothing you guys can do to stop me! 
> 
> Anyways, as always, please feel free to drop a kudos or a comment if you read and enjoyed this fic so I feel slightly less like I'm just sending fics out to the Void. Right now I'm imagining it like...a little paper boat that I let sail on a large, still lake in the middle of the night so the only light is coming from stars and the little boat quickly disappears as it sails away. 
> 
> So yeah. I hope you enjoyed my little paper boat. Have a good week, friends. <3


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